This might have been the big win for Bottas although it didn’t change his claim at second place in the championship.

We might have known that Lewis Hamilton was already the Formula One world champion before we went into the Abu Dhabi Grand Finale. However, the big fight was for second place between multiple-time world champion Sebastian Vettel and Mercedes Benz driver Valtteri Bottas. At the beginning of the race, if Bottas won, he might finish second in the championship under the assumption that Vettel finished 8th or worse. However, Mercedes did not have it written in their stars, although Valtteri Bottas did win the 2017 Abu Dhabi GP, with Hamilton finishing second. Sebastian Vettel took third place in his Ferrari Formula One car, thereby handing him the revered second step on the podium. Despite this top props still, go to Valtteri Bottas who finished in first place 3.899 seconds over Hamilton. Followed by Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.

It almost seemed like Bottas had just been granted his opportunity to shine, with team-mate Hamilton just at his back in second place. The Silver Arrows started edging out the competition, with Vettel and Ricciardo close on their tails in third and fourth place. However, while the alpha pack slowly phased out the competition, the action in the back of the pack was still raging. Proceedings started with Kevin Magnussen who first caught a spin ending up in twentieth place from fourteenth.

Vettel who had outpaced the rest of the pack, spent the rest of the race, two steps behind the W08 Mercedes Formula One cars eventually finishing the race almost 20 seconds clear of Hamilton. Riccardo Red Bull which spent a while in fourth place ultimately ended in the pits with a punctured tyre, which was followed by hydraulic problems as soon as he left and recaptured his position.

This also meant that Kimi Raikkonen who was lurking in P5 got an instant promotion with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen riding up his tail. He did manage to close a cap from 1.4 to .8 behind the Ice Man. Nico Hulkenberg of Renault finished in sixth place for the final race of the season. Followed by Force India’s Sergio Perez in sixth place and Mclaren’s Fernando Alonso, finishing his last race with the terribly unreliable Honda motor.